Wastewater Treatment
In fundamental and applied research projects, the Wastewater Treatment Research Group pursues the goal of developing and testing innovative processes and technical concepts in the municipal and industrial sectors. This is intended to increase the process performance and resource efficiency of the systems. The various research projects are carried out at different scales, from the laboratory to large-scale production, investigating a wide range of technologies.
Consultancy activities and research collaborations with operators of wastewater treatment plants, industry and engineering companies enable a strong relevance of the outcomes.
Main research areas:
Municipal wastewater treatment
- Use of membrane technology for the retention of suspended solids, microplastics as well as (antibiotic) resistant bacteria and viruses
- Improvement of performance and effectiveness of membrane bioreactors (MBR)
- Development of innovative biological processes, e.g. with aerobic sludge granules (AGS)
- Energy optimization in wastewater treatment
- Mathematical modelling of processes and technologies in wastewater treatment
Removal of micropollutants
- Investigation and optimisation of processes for micropollutant removal
- Oxidation with ozone
- Adsorption on activated carbon (powder activated carbon (PAC) or granular activated carbon (GAC))
- Investigation of combined processes
- BAC (Ozone + GAC)
- PAC + MBR
- Ozone + AGS
Industrial water and wastewater treatment
- Process-integrated water and wastewater treatment
- Water reuse in industrial context
- Tailor-made solutions for specific process streams
Development of innovative water management concepts
- Development of (semi-)decentral wastewater treatment systems
- Recovery of process water by treatment of low-polluted wastewater streams